The horizontal line represents the person’s life.1627 - born1720 - died

Gregory, David

, elder brother of the preceding,
was born in 1627 or 1628, and although he possessed all
the genius of the other branches of his family, was educated by his father for trade, and served an apprenticeship
to a mercantile house in Holland. Having a stronger passion, however, for knowledge than for money, he abandoned trade in 1655, and returning to his own country, he
succeeded, upn the death of an elder brorher, to the estate
of Kinarclie, situated about forty miles north of Aberdeen,
where he lived many years, and where thirty-two children
were born to him by two wives. Of these, three sons made
| a conspicuous figure in the republic of letters, being all
professors of mathematics at the same time in three of the
British universities, viz. David at Oxford, James at Edinburgh, and Charles at St. Andrew’s.

Mr. Gregory, the subject of this memoir, while he lived
at Kinardie, was a jest among the neighbouring gentlemen
for his ignorance of what was doing about his own farm,
but an oracle in matters of learning and philosophy, and
particularly in medicine, which he had studied for his
amusement, and began to practise among his poor neighbours. He acquired such a reputation in that science,
that he was employed by the nobility and gentlemen of
that county, but took no fees. His hours of study were
singular. Being much occupied through the day with
those who applied to him as a physician, he went early to
bed, rose about two or three in the morning, and, after
applying to his studies for some hours, went to bed again,
and slept an hour or two before breakfast. He was the
first man in that country who had a barometer; and having paid great attention to the changes in it, and the corresponding changes in the weather, he was once in danger
of being tried by the presbytery for witchcraft or conjuration. A deputation of that body waited upon him to inquire into the ground of certain reports that had come to
their ears; but, affording them ample satisfaction, a prosecution was prevented.

About the beginning of the last century, he removed
with his family to Aberdeen, and in the time of queen
Anne’s wars employed his thoughts upon an improvement
in artillery, in order to make the shot of great guns more
destructive to the enemy, and executed a model of the
engine he had contrived. The late Dr. Reid, in his additions to the lives of the Gregorys, published in Hutton’s
Dictionary, informs us that he conversed with a clockmaker at Aberdeen, who had been employed in making this
model; but having made many different pieces by direction
without knowing their intention, or how they were to be
put together, he could give no account of the whole. After
making some experiments with this model, which satisfied
him, Mr. Gregory was so sanguine in the hope of being
useful to the allies in the war against France, that he set
about preparing a field equipage with a view to make a
campaign in Flanders, and in the mean time sent his model
to his son the Savilian professor, the subject of our next
| article, that he might have his, and sir Isaac Newton’s opinion of it. His son shewed it to Newton without letting
him know that his own father was the inventor of it. Sir
Isaac was much displeased with it, saying, that if it had
tended as much to the preservation of mankind, as to their
destruction, the inventor would have deserved a great reward: but, as it was contrived solely for destruction, and
would soon be known by the enemy, he rather deserved
to be punished, and urged the professor very strongly to
destroy it, and if possible, to suppress the invention. It
is probable the professor followed this advice, as he died
soon after, and the model was never found. Sir Isaac’s
objection, however, appears rather to be fastidious, and
might apply with equal force to any improvement in muskeis, &c. or to gunpowder itself. When the rebellion
broke out in 1715, Mr. Gregory went a second time to
Holland, and returned when it was over to Aberdeen,
where he died about 1720, aged ninety-three, leaving behind him a history of his own time and country, which was
never published. One of his daughters was mother to the
late celebrated Dr. Thomas Reid of Glasgow, by whom the
above particulars were first communicated. 1

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